Day 78... You are what you eat.

I wonder if too much soy milk is not a good thing. I think of the saying, you are what you eat. And I also think of Forest Gump when he says 'stupid is as stupid does'. What if we can apply those same concerns to the excessive consuming of smoothies.

Smoothies is what smoothies does sir.

I have stayed smooth, and healthy again this week. I need to look at something I'm doing now that is rendering my efforts ineffective. On the lighter side, I have succeeded in not gaining weight. That was a success. But I haven't lost any either.

What did I do differently from before?

I'll tell you what I did that I am not doing now -- or should I say, I'll tell you what I didn't do. I didn't eat breakfast or lunch before. Now I have something for breakfast and lunch. I didn't have at least two snacks before. Granted, it may be a can of V8 juice, but I fit a couple of extra cans of the stuff in there during the course of the day now. I didn't eat before my workout. Now I have a soy-fruit-tofu smoothie at least an hour before working out.

What did I do back then? I would deprive myself of food all day and stay hungry and only eat at night when I felt certain that I earned the meal I was eating. Even if deep down inside I may have felt I didn't deserve it, I would still eat one meal at the end of the day. The meal was usually something substantial in the way of veggies and beans supplemented with tofu, or I would just have tofu in and of itself. It looks as though I will have to go back to this trend if I'm ever going to burn off the weight. I went to the dietitian. I did what she asked me to do. I maintained a steady weight of 337.4 pounds. That's great -- if I want to maintain my weight. I don't want to maintain my weight. I weigh a bone crushing 337 pounds and the weight has got to come off if I am going to have any quality of living in my life. Let's look at the facts.

Fact. I can't starve if I have a decent meal to look forward too at the end of the day. Bear Grylls and Les Stroud are my idols and they proved to me that it takes a little to go along way, so why should I stuff my fat ass for breakfast and lunch when I can be a man and wait until the end of the day for a job well done.

Fact. An obese person can afford to skip a meal or two. Contrary to pseudo-scientific belief, a fat person can't suffer from missing meals. They can only stand to lose a few pounds as a consequence.

Fact. I felt better when the weight was coming off. Some might argue that this is psychological in that I am responding emotionally to what the scale is telling me. However, if I stayed 400 pounds I wouldn't be doing kickboxing today. I'd still be a fat vegetarian sipping on a smoothie and noshing on a veggie burger. Now I can at least go for walk or move around, and dieting and moderate exercise alone did not get me the results I needed to turn my health around. Ass kicking cardio workouts drenched in sweat got me here.

Fact. It's not healthy going up in weight and it's not healthy going down either. But which should you choose? There is a limit to all this. I have found that I feel energetic and to have an elevated mood at around 1000 calories. Anything less and I begin to feel sick. Anything more and I just stay fat. I sit behind a desk all day, and most of my activities are sit down type of things. Going to the gym for two hours is the thing that makes the difference. But even if I didn't go regularly, or not at all, a thousand calories is plenty of energy for me. I am not the farmer or sea bound fisherman my parents and grandparents had been. Back in the day they needed over five thousand calories to survive, but more than likely food was a little more scarce and expensive for them. So they were lean and they lived long into their nineties. My parents are not so lucky. My dad died a few years ago and my mom is weak with diabetes and blood pressure issues at 65. I love her very much but she is a victim of this new modern sit-down and corn-syrup-super-hydrogenated-100-calorie-per-package lifestyle, which leads me to my next point.

Fact. It's not just the calories in your food, but the nutritional value in conjunction with the degree of processing we have to watch out for that leads to better health. I have come to believe that a smoothie is just that... a smoothie. Soy beans should be eaten fresh and not processed into milk and tofu. Soy milk and tofu are great if you want to maintain a certain weight and stay healthy, but they are processed to a certain degree. I'm not a vegan because I love animals. I'm doing it because meat,and processed foods are trying to kill me. Even worse than dying is to go on living as an obese person. There is no happiness in this life unless one is truly free from the bonds of poor health and obesity.

I have stated it clearly here for everyone to read. This is my mantra. My declaration of Independence. My meditation. My vision. I offer this up for anyone who reads it with the hopes that it will stimulate others into action, response and revision.

Eat lean, work hard and live long.